Plastic -- the un-disposable disposables

(Photo source)

When our youngest son was a toddler, we visited relatives in North Fort Myers, Florida. Summer home of Thomas Alva Edison and vacation location for his buddies Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone -- different era -- but same area.

One of the highlights for all of us Midwesterners was a trip to Fort Myers Beach where we fed the seagulls. It always astounds me and makes me feel a part of the universe when nature accepts me. Maybe it comes from living with cats and getting a lot of rejection from them.

But the day those birds spread their wings and then daintily nipped bits of hot dog buns from our finger tips and at times off of our plates when we weren't looking -- I fell in love. Now maybe that sounds weird because often these non-cuddly birds are referred to as garbage disposals.

These garbage disposals eat fish and small critters as well as human food and when they're out over the ocean more often than not while nabbing a bit of shrimp or plankton, they ingest plastic. Since by weight there is basically six times more plastic in the ocean than plankton, all seabirds, fish, and other aquatic critters are eating plastic. The birds are swallowing it, regurgitating it and taking it back to their babies. Dead birds on the beach, decomposed to the point that stomach contents are exposed, reveal pop bottle caps, and plastic disks and all manner of plastic from the trash dumped.

Plastic never goes away.

It may breakdown or wear down into smaller pieces and even plastic dust, but it never turns into anything but plastic. Several videos, including one from the television news program, Nightline, show the situation.

Beach sand -- made from the wearing down of rocks and coral -- are now showing another component. You guessed it -- plastic. We have plastic sand.

Perhaps more insidious than the oil spills, this plastic trash is turning our ocean into plastic soup. Birds who eat jelly fish mistake shredded plastic bags for their natural food source. They eat the plastic and get no nutrition, cannot digest it, sometimes it simply stays in their digestive system and they starve to death.

I've been walking into our local grocery store, forgetting every week to bring bags for my groceries. I say I will recycle the bags to the library for them to hand out to customers to put their books in. No more.

I do not want to contribute one more sack to the ocean garbage dump. If I could find some way to never purchase another disposable plastic container -- I would. Maybe if we all find ways to stop contributing to the waste of this planet, we can all live a little longer and a lot better.

Oh, just thought I'd throw in another kind of waste that is the subject of a book I plan to check out: "The Big Necessity" by Rose George. It is about human waste. Recently we watched the movie: Slumdog Millionaire and there is a latrine moment. I didn't understand the reason for the one brother to guard the door while his younger brother was inside squatting over an open hole filled with human waste. But according to an intro to this book in the Indian slum 60,000 people share 10 toilets.

And if you think the ocean and land pollution are where it ends -- think about space junk. Jupiter and Saturn have rings, well so does the earth only ours is a ring of junk. (see photo of space junk)

Of course there is also light pollution and air pollution but that's for another blog.

Sorry, if you are looking for an upside to this blog, I don't have one. All of this garbage, plastic, pollution doesn't just concern me -- it is turning into a nightmare that haunts me even during my waking moments. I think it should haunt all of us.

Could simple choices kill us?

It was the 1970s and well-paying low-skill jobs were disappearing, endangered like the Peregrine falcons.

We were young, newly married, and in need of income. For the next two decades my husband worked entry level jobs for an agri-fertilizer company, sold animal feeds, worked for various construction companies and ran a lumber yard for 84 Lumber. He spent several years working in a factory that made rubber mud flaps and feed pans. And eventually he decided to return to college and pursue a profession rather than a job. He was hired as an accountant for companies in the aerospace industry.

In 1991, the New York Times wrote about polluters.

"The Mobil Corporation may be responsible for cleaning up wastes at 47 sites under the Federal Superfund program, a fact not disclosed in the company's annual report.

A subsidiary of the Amoco Corporation tried to install hazardous-waste incinerators on Indian lands, ostensibly to avoid state and Federal emissions regulations.

The American Cyanamid Company releases four times as much toxic waste into the environment per $1,000 of sales as the average chemical company.

These nuggets of information -- not denied by the companies involved -- are in a series of environmental profiles being published by the Council on Economic Priorities, a nonprofit group in New York that monitors social policies of large corporations. The reports are intended to appeal to socially conscious investors and to encourage companies to minimize pollution."

Not long ago local Fox-TV aired an investigative piece exploring the surprising number of NASA employees diagnosed with ALS. In conversation with one of those employees, I listened to him laugh, shake his head and tell about the lake of hazard waste materials that everyone knew about and no one dared discuss.

Other articles tell about the high rate of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in the military.

I mention my husband's list of jobs after reading an article today that begins: "New preliminary research suggests that exposure to the chemical formaldehyde, present in a variety of workplaces, could greatly increase a person's chances of developing Lou Gehrig's disease."

His choices seemed so benign. He simply wanted to provide for his wife and his babies. Did that honorable intent cost him his health? Has he developed this rare neuromuscular disease because his employers set him to work among a variety of chemicals, including formaldehyde.

What other choices do we make that will cost us our lives, our health, or maybe simply quality of life?

We often think we exist in a protective bubble. Bad things won't come to us who are doing the right things, making the 'right' choices, obeying the rules, living uprightly, following the Golden Rule....

Nature seems to live by another set of rules. If we live in a tainted environment, we will pay the consequences. It doesn't really matter who tainted it, who polluted, who continues to pollute.

The consequences for those of us living in this chemical miasma will remain the same no matter which corporation causes the problems.

Do we really care if there is global warming? Do we really want to point fingers as to who did it? Well, okay, yes, I would really like to line the culprits up along the edge of some lake of hazardous materials and push them in. But on my mature days, my better self simply wants to move forward. It is time to at least attempt to clean up this mess so that we can cut the cancer rates, the respiratory problems, the growing number of medical problems afflicting just about everyone.

What about water pollution?

What about the food chain and contamination and mishandling? Perhaps he ate too many potato chips? Maybe that's what caused his muscles to die.

When we talk about alternative energies a large percentage of Americans support solar energy research. But in that discussion, nuclear energy enters the mix. What about the radioactive waste? The chemical sludge that no one knows what to do with it? What about our space race and the fuels used to propel those shuttles and rockets? What about the chemicals that remain and must be stored or disposed of?

Should we worry more about the unanswered questions as well as the unasked questions? Should profit truly be the most important element that guides decisions at every level in every venue? Will we continue to put profit ahead of life and quality of life? Or will profits just rank first ahead of 'other' people's' health and shortened life spans.

Isn't it time to clean up our own backyards? If the owners of the companies won't, the workers must. It may be the only thing that saves lives -- including those of our children and grandchildren.

If you're shaking your head and asking, "What difference can I make?" Well, check out what differences some of our young people are making. We all must make a differences -- our lives depend upon it!

It Isn't Easy Being Green

Green seems to be the color of choice this week.

Green stands for growing and green for environmentally responsible residents of Earth. Like Kermit T. Frog, the feeling of wannabe greenies is, "It isn't easy being green." But perhaps with discussion and exchange of ideas, a bit of determination and imagination, green may grow on us -- and I don't mean moss.

Some areas where I encountered green seemed to all meet at the Internet Writing Workshop.

The Creative Nonfiction Discussion Group are discussing the essay by Deborah Halter: The Joys of Walking vs. the Need for Speed that appeared in the June 22nd issue of National Catholic Reporter. Sadly the essay availability only extends to subscribers of NCR, but the gist of it involves her efforts to walk more and drive less. Like many of us, the author enjoys the driving, the quick results of driving to a destination as opposed to time-eating walks. And like many of us, a walk can not just be a walk, it must involve a destination, be useful, be work, or utilitarian.

I particularly liked this statement:

The first thing I learned was that when we drive, we miss many of the sights, sounds, smells and sensations of being human in the world -- a rabbit under a bush, 5-year-olds playing hopscotch on the driveway, the pungency of wet pavement, the poking of grass and gravel underfoot.

When we roll up the windows and turn on the air, we're twice removed. When we play the radio or a CD, we're thrice removed.When we listen to the radio or a CD and talk on a cell phone, we're removed a notch further. And when we're doing all that plus eating a burger or yelling at the kids in the back seat, our alienation from the environment becomes exponential.

I read Halter's words and can hear my husband's voice. His biggest pet peeve on his long drives to and from work involved people (women) in big SUVs as they multi-tasked (cell phones, mascara/make up application, coffee drinking, hair combing, and even reading while driving erratically and often coming within a hare's breath of running him off of the road.

Another touch with being green also originated at IWW with an article by a member, Wendee Holtcamp. Her article Thirty Days of Consumer Celibacy appears on OnEarth's website and not only follows her experiment into recycling and not buying new items for thirty days. It also imparts information about the biggest polluters and the project San Francisco Compact, started in 2006 by several concerned women.

Holtcamp wrote,

The average American generates about 4.5 pounds of trash a day -- a figure that,
according to the Environmental Protection Agency, includes paper, food, yard
trimmings, furniture, and everything else you toss out at home and on the job.

The leaders in pollution can be listed in a relatively short list: "cars and trucks; meat and poultry farming; crop production; home heating, hot water, and air conditioning; household appliances; home construction; and household water use and sewage treatment."

Moving on with the green synchronicity that came together this week, let me introduce a former IWW member Sandra Friend. She inspires me with her immersion into environment and Florida and her writings. She has written several books and articles about hiking, especially about hiking in Florida.

When I'm concerned that its time for the pest control guy to spray for bugs, she's slogging through some swamp locating mystery orchids and leading tours. She and Wendee leave me in the dust when it comes to environmentally responsible.

But with everyone coming together in a Greenpeace kind of week, maybe I'll finally step up and do my part -- after the bug guy gets done spraying for roaches and spiders and....